Invictus
2010
Dir. Christopher Nolan
Starring. Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy.
Dreams, the ultimate creative license teamed with Christopher Nolan, arguably the most innovative director of this generation, a Kubrick for the 21st century, if you will.
After the massive success of The Dark Knight, both commercially and critically, Inception was always going to have the hype to sell itself. On paper it has everything - Nolan at the helm, DiCaprio, the Hollywood "veteran", despite his age, teamed with Page and Gordon-Levitt, the queen and king of indie, topped off with an endless CGI budget. Inception has "blockbuster" written all over it, but lets get one thing straight, this isnt your average Mission Impossible or Transformers. Oh no...
I chose to see this movie away from the crowds at Leicester Square in a more humble (and half-full) theatre, just outside of Whitechapel. From start to finish, the audience around me seemed to meet Inception with a sense of sustained confusion, and when the credits rolled, a thoughtful silence seemed to overcome every spectator, myself included. But that's just the kind of film that Inception is. Without sounding snobbish, it's lightyears away from the tastes of opening day blockbuster revellers. Overlapping narratives and concepts completely caught me off guard, and I knew from then that this would be a film that can't just be viewed once.
In all, the movie had some truly breathtaking action sequences including the most accurate gunshots I have ever witnessed on film. The cityscapes within dream sequences were phenomenal and DiCaprio once again added to his CV with another fantastic performance. Any other views of mine will come after a second viewing...
8/10
